Monday, 30 March 2015

11th Anniversary, blogging to the roof of the world

If anyone is to blame, and thank, for all this it is Shaan Hurley. I read his Between the Lines AutoCAD blog before I really knew what a blog was. It prompted me to think about doing my own and he suggested trying TypePad. It made blog management & hosting simple. I’d looked at other alternatives at the time and found them too limiting or complex.

I love not worrying about hosting, running servers, ‘web page coding’ or managing plug-ins and having support to fight the hostile aspects of web hosting. TypePad has been target to a few denial of service style attacks this year but as a blogger I haven’t had to deal with them.

While other platforms do get some of my attention — I like Twitter, love Microsoft Sway, barely tolerate Facebook — the content I really care about still goes on my blogs.

The main reason is its open — no login or membership to view — and I have full control of my content and presentation. Twitter is awesome for what it is, but very limited. Facebook is plagued with pesky (to be polite) algorithms deciding what your readers see (not all you post) and a dismal interface*. Sway is beautiful, elegant and delightful to use but compliments, rather than competes with, a blog.

Biggest change to my blogs this year was a recent update to ‘responsive design’ thanks to a beta TypePad theme builder. It meant I could maintain my design, with some refinements, and have a blog which works on anything from a smartphone to large monitor. I’ve yet to see it on a smart watch — my GShock doesn’t really qualify — but wonder if anyone out there has?

I away from the blog I have interesting challenging year ahead. It may see a change of focus, new impetus, for the CAD blog. It was rather neglected as I prepared, experienced and blogged about a month cycling across Tibet to Mt Everest (photo right) and Nepal. It wasn’t a sponsored trip but, by chance, was wearing an Autodesk cap at Everest so CAD wasn’t entirely forgotten!

I’ll be able to share more about my upcoming changes soon. I still find it amazing that thanks to this hobby I’ve made, and in some cases met, many friends around the world. To everyone, everywhere, thanks for visiting, reading and subscribing!

Some annual stats follow in the extended post if you’re interested.

* It amazes me how awful Facebook is to use and how broken, given the resources they have, it is. Basic stuff like photo/comment relationships and recognition of time zones are a mess.

Statistics:

Another year of less than prolific posting but visits held up. I’ve shown the FeedBurner RSS Subscription Stats but lost a lot of faith in the service. It appears Google have put it on death-watch, or death-ignore to be more accurate, and the numbers bounce all over the place. They have massively reduced after spending most the year bouncing between 10,000 & 200.

Visits & Subscribers:

The weekly “blog beat” is fairly constant, thanks to the back catalogue as much as new content.

Location:

As usual the US dominates but surprised to see New Zealand third! All that plugging of, and the blog at, Revit User Groups perhaps?

Browser & Operating System:

It’s interesting to watch this over the years even if it doesn’t really mean much. Compared to 2014 IE lost less than 1%, Firefox was down 2%. iOS Safari was up 0.5% but Chrome Android jumped from 9th to 6th.

The winner was Chrome (windows) up 5%, nearly doubling the lead it established over IE last year also impacting Firefox and Opera.

Operating Systems saw Windows still top, almost unchanged, both iOS and Mac ahead of Android.

Of the Windows versions 7 still rules, slightly up on last year. After debuting 5th last year Windows 8.1 bumped XP from 2nd to 3rd place. Both XP and Vista halved compared to last year. I wonder how this will change over the next year with the arrival of Windows 10?

Thanks for reading this far through the numbers if you did, see you next year!

Comments

If anyone is to blame, and thank, for all this it is Shaan Hurley. I read his Between the Lines AutoCAD blog before I really knew what a blog was. It prompted me to think about doing my own and he suggested trying TypePad. It made blog management & hosting simple. I’d looked at other alternatives at the time and found them too limiting or complex.

I love not worrying about hosting, running servers, ‘web page coding’ or managing plug-ins and having support to fight the hostile aspects of web hosting. TypePad has been target to a few denial of service style attacks this year but as a blogger I haven’t had to deal with them.

While other platforms do get some of my attention — I like Twitter, love Microsoft Sway, barely tolerate Facebook — the content I really care about still goes on my blogs.

The main reason is its open — no login or membership to view — and I have full control of my content and presentation. Twitter is awesome for what it is, but very limited. Facebook is plagued with pesky (to be polite) algorithms deciding what your readers see (not all you post) and a dismal interface*. Sway is beautiful, elegant and delightful to use but compliments, rather than competes with, a blog.

Biggest change to my blogs this year was a recent update to ‘responsive design’ thanks to a beta TypePad theme builder. It meant I could maintain my design, with some refinements, and have a blog which works on anything from a smartphone to large monitor. I’ve yet to see it on a smart watch — my GShock doesn’t really qualify — but wonder if anyone out there has?

I away from the blog I have interesting challenging year ahead. It may see a change of focus, new impetus, for the CAD blog. It was rather neglected as I prepared, experienced and blogged about a month cycling across Tibet to Mt Everest (photo right) and Nepal. It wasn’t a sponsored trip but, by chance, was wearing an Autodesk cap at Everest so CAD wasn’t entirely forgotten!

I’ll be able to share more about my upcoming changes soon. I still find it amazing that thanks to this hobby I’ve made, and in some cases met, many friends around the world. To everyone, everywhere, thanks for visiting, reading and subscribing!

Some annual stats follow in the extended post if you’re interested.

* It amazes me how awful Facebook is to use and how broken, given the resources they have, it is. Basic stuff like photo/comment relationships and recognition of time zones are a mess.